This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Prayer is not a monologue. It speaks to God and to the community. In the last analysis, religion is not what goes on inside a soul. It is what goes on in the world, between people, between us and God. To trap faith in a monologue, and pretend that it resides solely inside the self, undermines the true interchange of all belief.
Belief | Faith | God | People | Prayer | Religion | Self | Soul | World | God |
We live by Faith; but Faith is not the slave of text and legend. Reason’s voice and God’s, Nature’s and Duty’s, never are at odds. What asks our Father of His children, save justice and mercy and humility, a reasonable service of good deeds, pure living, tenderness to human needs, reverence and trust, and prayer for light to see the Master’s footprints in our daily ways? No knotted scourge nor sacrificial knife, but the calm beauty of an ordered life whose very breathing is unworded praise! A life that stands as all true lives have stood firm-rooted in the faith that God is good.
Beauty | Children | Deeds | Duty | Faith | Father | God | Good | Humility | Justice | Life | Life | Light | Mercy | Nature | Praise | Prayer | Reason | Reverence | Service | Tenderness | Trust | Beauty | God |
Preach faith till you have it; and then, because you have it, you will preach faith.
I have deep faith that the principle of the universe will be beautiful and simple.
Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope or confidence.
Achievement | Confidence | Faith | Hope | Nothing | Optimism |
We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guild or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality.
Beauty | Compassion | Despair | Dogma | Faith | Fear | Hope | Ignorance | Joy | Learning | Love | Optimism | Pessimism | Reason | Selfishness | Sin | Truth | Beauty |
It is faith and not reason which impels men to action. Intelligence is content to point out the road but never drives along it.
Action | Faith | Intelligence | Men | Reason |
A.J. Cronin, fully Archibald Joseph "A.J." Cronin
No one in good faith can ever be lost.
It takes vision and courage to create. It takes faith and courage to prove.
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
Thinking for oneself is always arduous and is sometimes painful. The temptation to stop thinking and to take dogma on faith is strong. Yet, since the intellect does possess the capacity to think for itself, it also has the impulse and feels the obligation. We may therefore feel sure that the intellect will always refuse, sooner or later, to take traditional doctrines on trust.
Capacity | Dogma | Faith | Impulse | Obligation | Temptation | Thinking | Trust | Will | Intellect | Temptation | Think |
The man who believes firmly that the Creator of the universe loves him and cares infinitely what he dose with his life - this man is automatically freed from much of the self-distrust that afflicts less certain men. Fear, guilt, hostility, anger - these are the emotions that stifle thought and impede action. By reducing or eliminating them, religious faith makes boldness possible, and boldness makes achievement possible.
Achievement | Action | Anger | Boldness | Distrust | Emotions | Faith | Fear | Guilt | Life | Life | Man | Men | Self | Thought | Universe | Thought |